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• (UPDATING) Eureka High on Hard Lockdown as Police Investigate Off-Campus Incident

Press release from the Eureka Police Department:

On September 12, 2023, at about 10:15 a.m., a City of Eureka employee witnessed a male enter the greenbelt near 15th and M Streets with a rifle on his back. Due to the proximity to the campus, Eureka High School was put on a lockdown out of an abundance of precaution while officers investigated.

With the assistance of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and a Fortuna Police Department drone, officers located and detained the male in the greenbelt around 12:30 p.m. A BB gun that resembled a rifle was located and seized.

The male was ultimately questioned and released from the scene, as no threats had been made. The Eureka Police Department would like to thank the observant City employee, assisting agencies and Eureka City Schools for their swift action.

Lockdowns are oftentimes scary situations for everyone involved. In the event of future lockdowns:

• Avoid calling the school or police
• Do not rush to the scene
• Check official social media pages for updates
• Avoid spreading information that has not been confirmed by an official source
• Educate yourself on school procedures
• Keep your contact information current with your school

Just after 9 a.m. this morning, the historic Hawaiian vessel Hōkūleʻa pulled within view of the small crowd of onlookers at Eureka’s F Street dock. Being in inshore waters, she was under tow from her motorized consort, the Kōlea. There was a moment of confusion as the two boats passed by the dock altogether and floated into the channel separating Woodley Island from the mainland. Were they heading up to the Bonnie Gool dock instead?

But a moment later the Kōlea lazed into sharp U-turn mid-channel and the Hōkūleʻa, dozens of feet behind, followed suit, with much of the crew of the double canoe rushing astern to work her giant steering oar, flipping her head around to the west. They pulled up at F Street, and advance scout and ground crew member Mike Cunningham, a Honolulu resident, rushed down to assist in making her fast to the dock.

The Hōkūleʻa is a double-canoe sailing ship modeled after Polynesian seafaring boats of antiquity, and is a source of pride for native Hawai’i. It was conceived of and built in the mid-1970s, with the goal of recreating the great Polynesian voyages during the settlement and of that immense region of the Pacific Ocean, leaving behind a culture that stretched from the Hawaiian Island of Ni’ihau in the north, to New Zealand in the southwest, to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the southeast.

The people behind the Hōkūleʻa project wanted to recreate and revive the old ways of long-distance navigating – without compasses or GPS devices or anything of that sort, using only knowledge of the stars, the winds and the currents. One of them, a young man named Nainoa Thompson, studied navigation with the only person they could find who still knew the old ways of wayfinding, a man from a small Micronesian island named Pius Piailug. After years of study, in 1980 they and a crew successfully sailed the Hōkūleʻa from Maui to Tahiti and back without modern tools – a distance of about 5,500 miles, round-trip.

The Hōkūleʻa has undertaken many missions since then, around the Polynesian Triangle and around the world, and when the boat pulled into Eureka for a stop on its current mission — “Moananuiākea: A Voyage for Earth,” a trip around the Pacific Ocean that began in Juneau, Alaska at the beginning of this summer – Thompson himself came to the side of the boat to tell visitors about the purpose of their current work.

“The evolution of this voyage is because we see the ocean changing,” Thompson said. “It’s our fundamental belief that the greatest environmental challenge of the 21st century is to protect the ocean. Because it protects life as we know it.”

Thompson said the crew of the Hōkūleʻa is serving as the “conduit” for a team they have built to advocate for ocean protection, against risks like acidification and the subsequent loss of plankton – the biggest producer of oxygen on the planet.

The size and scope of the mission has taken the Hōkūleʻa out of her normal waters, and Thompson spent some time marveling at the size of the Pacific Northwest’s swell and the fog. The boat wasn’t built for this kind of weather, but so far she’s been holding up.

But it does look like changing weather is going to keep the Hōkūleʻa in port for a couple of days, so you’ll be able to take a walk down to the F Street dock, and, if you’re lucky, catch a few words with the friendly crew. This morning, Thompson was last seen embracing Wiyot Tribal Chair Ted Hernandez, who welcomed them to town. It seemed as though some sightseeing had been ordered up for the crew.

According to Mike Cunningham, the expedition’s advance man, it looks as though the round-the-Pacific trip might be postponed a little bit. After the catastrophic fires on Maui, the crew feels a need to get this symbol of native Hawaiian ingenuity and accomplishment and back home.

“We know that the presence of Hōkūleʻa back in Hawai’i is going to give the people strength,” Cunningham said.

Read more about the Hōkūleʻa at the project’s website.

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UPDATE, 9/13: Just in! The Hawaiian vessel Hōkūleʻa, currently docked in Humboldt Bay, has announced they will offer public tours today (Wednesday) from 2 to 5 p.m. at F Street Dock.

UPDATE, 12:24 p.m.: Eureka Police Chief Todd Jarvis tells the Outpost’s Andrew Goff, on scene, that they have a suspect in custody.

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UPDATE, 11:47 a.m.: Updates from EPD:

UPDATE: Police are now searching the greenbelt area to the north of the Eureka High Campus with a drone. They are looking for a white male in his 40’s, bleach blonde hair shaved short, last seen wearing a blue sweatshirt. The male was seen walking in the greenbelt with what appeared to be a rifle over his shoulder and had a small black Chihuahua. Call 911 if you see anyone matching this description.

UPDATE: Based on the recommendation of EPD, EHS has moved from a hard lockdown to a soft lockdown. Teachers will resume instruction with students 𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐮𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 - 𝐄𝐏𝐃 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲, 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧.

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UPDATE, 11 a.m.: Assistant Police Chief Brian Stephens tells the Outpost’s Andrew Goff, on scene, that there is no threat to students, and that the school was closed out of an abundance of caution. The police’s investigation is focused on the greenbelt, and as kids often head that way during the lunch period they wanted to get ahead of that.

Parents are asked not to come to the school, Stephens said

A Eureka High School administrator sent the following message to staff a few minutes ago:

Staff,

Please remain in a hard lockdown.

EPD is concerned about a potential threat in the surrounding area. We are evacuating the woodshop to the Ag building. Reminder, please keep all students away from windows and doors, with blinds shut and doors locked. If someone needs entry into your room they will key in.

UPDATE, 10:48 a.m.: EPD spokesperson Brittany Powell tells the Outpost that a man with a firearm was seen in the greenbelt north of the school. Powell said that Police Chief Todd Jarvis wishes to emphasize that the lockdown is purely cautionary. No one at the school has been hurt.

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ORIGINAL POST: Eureka High School went on hard lockdown a few minutes ago, which students being confined in their rooms and told to stay quiet, according to several messages received by the Outpost.

The Eureka Police Department says, on its Facebook page, that their officers are investigating an incident off-campus but “in close proximity,” and called for the lockdown out of an “abundance of caution.” They’re asking people to stay out of the area.

Scanner traffic indicates that police are searching a wide area of town around the school.

We’ll update when we know more.

Cities in the West can’t legally clear encampments unless they can provide adequate alternative shelter to the camp residents. But what, precisely, constitutes “adequate shelter?”

Is it one cot among dozens in a congregate shelter? A top bunk for an elderly person? An individual tiny home? A strip of asphalt, without electricity or water, where rows of people can set up their tents?

The definition is at the heart of debates raging across California in the five years since a federal appeals court ruled that it’s cruel and unusual punishment to evict homeless people from public spaces when they have no other options. The 2018 decision on that Boise, Idaho case by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, binding on states in the West, did not require cities to set up enough shelter beds for their entire homeless population, but said it would be unconstitutional to criminally penalize people camping in public when they lack “access to adequate temporary shelter.”

Last week a three-judge panel of that same court took another crack at the issue — this time declining to lift a temporary order that has, for nine months, halted San Francisco officials from sweeping the city’s homeless camps.

The most recent order gave San Francisco officials confirmation that the city can sweep sites and cite residents who are “voluntarily” homeless: those refusing legitimate, adequate shelter offers. Officials said they haven’t yet decided whether to do that.

An emergency non-congregate housing site in Chico on Sept. 6, 2023. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

California cities have been itching to get around the technical bounds of the Idaho ruling as constituents with homes complain about encampments in public spaces, citing public health and other concerns. Many local governments say they can ban encampments and that they have the alternative shelter options to enforce it.

Calling it a necessary form of tough love, they’re cracking down on public camps, pairing an offer of shelter — or a stern prodding toward it — with the threat of arrest or fine. San Diego in late July began enforcing a ban on camps in most public places during the day; other cities that have recently passed camping restrictions include Sacramento, San Rafael and Culver City.

Some say the carrot-and-stick approach is too weak a response to flagrant public health and safety concerns on the streets. Others say it’s an infringement on the rights of unhoused people who, if they refuse shelter because of personal circumstances, will get shuffled around town, lose belongings and contact with social workers, or be pushed to more remote or dangerous places to sleep.

In San Francisco, both advocates for the homeless and the city claimed the latest court decision supported their side.

“We are pleased that the 9th Circuit agreed with the City that the preliminary injunction does not apply to those who refuse shelter or those who have a shelter bed and choose to maintain a tent on the street,” City Attorney David Chiu said in a statement.

An attorney for the plaintiffs, a group of unsheltered San Franciscans and the nonprofit Coalition on Homelessness, said that was always the case — but with shelters often near capacity, the city hasn’t shown it is truly providing adequate offers to those on the streets. More than 4,000 people live unsheltered on the streets in San Francisco, while the city has just over 3,000 beds, and notes that not all unoccupied beds are immediately available for someone to be placed.

“The question is, are those people actually voluntarily homeless, did they actually give them a specific offer?” said Zal Shroff, interim legal director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. “The city is representing that 4,000 people on the streets are there by choice.”

New bans with new tents

In San Diego, police have for more than a month been enforcing a controversial new ban on camps on most public property during the day, or when shelter is available. The July ban prohibits camping near schools or shelters and in parks regardless of whether there’s shelter available. Enforcement coincided with a new “Safe Sleeping site” near a city park as a nod to adequate shelter options.

Though police have also recently ramped up enforcement of an older law banning camps from blocking sidewalks, they say they haven’t yet made an arrest under the new one, instead issuing 85 warnings and four citations in August. Police say they’re employing a progressive strategy by which city staff and then police offer shelter first and issue a warning, then step up to a misdemeanor charge or even an arrest if an unhoused person continues to camp in a prohibited spot.

San Diego Police Capt. Shawn Takeuchi of the Neighborhood Policing Division acknowledges it’s an imperfect approach to the needs of the 6,500 city residents who are homeless any given night this year.

“We cannot enforce our way through homelessness; it’s not the proper way to address homelessness.”
— Shawn Takeuchi, San Diego Police Captain

Of those, about 2,600 were in shelter beds. Nearly 3,300 were unsheltered — more than a 30% increase from last year. There are about 1,800 city-funded shelter beds in San Diego and about 600 others that are not funded by the city.

“We cannot enforce our way through homelessness; it’s not the proper way to address homelessness,” Takeuchi said.

But for those who refuse a shelter placement or willingly flaunt other laws such as those against public drug use, Takeuchi said, “enough’s enough. Government intervention needs to happen.”

The new “safe sleeping site” — a fenced asphalt lot with 136 tents that fit up to two people each — is located in a city maintenance yard tucked into the southern edge of the storied Balboa Park. The park and areas near schools have been the city’s first enforcement targets.

The city-funded site offers two meals a day, showers and services to help residents with their housing search. Couples can stay together. Folks can stay indefinitely.

It’s a new option in a city that has historically offered only large congregate shelters, which many refuse or find unsuitable. Mayor Todd Gloria said it comes with the “expectation” that more people will choose it over living on the streets when beds are available.

“We have put out a tremendous amount of carrots and we do need a few sticks,” he said. “It is the expectations of taxpayers funding these efforts that folks avail themselves of it.”

As of last week, the site had seven tents open, a spokesperson for Gloria said. The city’s other shelters are all nearly full any given night, said Sofia Cardenas, data and compliance manager at the Alpha Project, a San Diego nonprofit that runs five other shelters.

Neighboring cities have reported increases in encampments in their own borders in the wake of San Diego’s new law, and Cardenas said the nonprofit’s outreach workers are having a harder time finding clients who have scattered around the city.

Takeuchi acknowledged when officers approach a person with a warning or to cite them for violating the camping ban, they don’t necessarily know if there’s a placement for that person’s specific circumstances.

“It’s not as simple as, okay, there’s a bed available for every person we contact because there are certain beds that are not available to certain populations of folks,” he said.

When considering the new ordinance, the city’s attorneys in a legal memo noted that certain shelter options would be inadequate and put the city in danger of violating the Idaho ruling — such as an offer of a top bunk for an elderly or disabled person.

In the first month of enforcement, Takeuchi said out of 85 warnings only three people told police they would agree to a shelter placement, though people who are interested can call the city directly and do not have to accept the offer directly from police.

“It’s not as simple as, okay, there’s a bed available for every person we contact because there are certain beds that are not available to certain populations of folks.”
— Shawn Takeuchi, San Diego Police Captain

Cardenas said the city should have increased the number and variety of shelter beds before starting the enforcement, and said existing shelter spaces, including the tent site, may still be inadequate for the elderly or those with disabilities or mental illness.

“Mostly we see people shuffling around,” trying to avoid police, Cardenas said. “When we’re asking them to accept sanctioned campgrounds … is that the best we can do? Accept this, or go to jail?”

Cities contend they’ve been increasing the options. In San Diego, Gloria said officials have another sanctioned campsite planned to open this year that will be able to accommodate up to 400, and have loosened rules on the city’s congregate shelters so that residents can bring in a pet and are not required to be sober.

Mirroring other California politicians on the matter, Gloria criticized activists who call the shelter offerings inadequate as an “infinitesimally small number of voices who seemingly enjoy seeing encampments on the streets.”

“It’s never enough for them,” he said.

‘Better for who?’

Even if shelter spaces are open, unhoused people sometimes opt out.

Under the din of the Highway 99 overpass along the edge of Sacramento’s urban core, a man emerged from his tent on a recent weekend morning and sat at a makeshift breakfast table, shaking a box of cereal.

The man, who would only identify himself as 53-year-old Eric D., said he’d lived at this encampment of about five tents for about a month. His last campsite was a few blocks away near a freeway exit, and highway patrol officers told him he had to leave. The officers had given him a pamphlet with information about social services and shelter; he said “most of the information, a lot of the homeless people already know.”

“Better for who?” he said, when asked whether he would consider a shelter placement better than the encampment. “It depends on the individual.”

People and dogs walking between pallet shelters at an emergency non-congregate housing site in Chico on Sept. 6, 2023. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

Before the freeway exit site, Eric said he’d stayed at a shelter near downtown Sacramento for about two months, but said he got kicked out after missing the curfew three times. The third time, he said he had been staying with relatives while attending a family funeral. Now, he walks or takes the bus two miles from the tent to the community college where he takes classes twice a week, and a social worker visits him occasionally, helping him search for an apartment.

Eric said not all shelter experiences are comfortable and some people chafe at the rules. If he tries one again, he would want it to be near the community college.

“A lot of people are living harder than they need to,” he said of life on the streets. “Me, I can’t stand it.”

His neighbor, Joel Martinez, bagged up trash on the sidewalk before sitting down to light a cigarette.

Martinez, 63, considers himself a caretaker for a friend he’s met on the streets. She lives around the corner in a van, and that morning she was leaning on its hood partially clothed, chattering to herself. Martinez worries about leaving her alone.

“She talks to people we don’t see or hear,” he said. “People were taking advantage of her. I don’t know if she’d fit in at a shelter.”

Still, Martinez said, he’s trying to talk her into moving indoors or to a sanctioned campground with him.

He said he understands why cities are moving to ban encampments, and said not all residents keep their camps clean, though some, he said, “police ourselves.”

“I know people don’t like to be reminded of the homelessness,” he said. “But it’s here, and it seems like the COVID thing really brought it all out.”

Asphalt next to an airport doesn’t count

Federal courts have rarely defined the adequacy of specific types of shelter — though in one extreme case a judge said some things simply don’t count.

In Chico, a group of homeless residents sued the city in 2021 over its enforcement of a ban on camping on any public property. At the time, the city had 120 congregate shelter beds (capacity was diminished during the pandemic) and more than 570 unsheltered residents.

In response to the suit, officials opened a temporary sanctioned campground that summer where residents were allowed to park trailers or pitch tents. The city said it could accommodate its entire homeless population.

Airplanes and the control tower of the Chico Regional Airport in Chico on Sept. 6, 2023. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

Federal District Court Judge Morrison C. England — upon finding that the campground was a strip of asphalt alongside the local airport on the outskirts of town, with one awning erected for shade — was unconvinced.

“This raises the question, ‘What is shelter?’” he wrote, before quickly dismissing Chico’s “asphalt tarmac with no roof and no walls, no water and no electricity.”

Chico officials closed the airport site after less than three months, and last year settled the suit by agreeing to build a “pallet shelter” — 177 tiny homes — where those who are camping in a prohibited spot can be directed by outreach workers or police.

Under the settlement, when the city plans to sweep a camp, it must count the number of people living there and confirm there’s enough open shelter beds for them, then notify the plaintiffs’ attorneys and conduct outreach to offer the residents shelter in a process that could take 17 days.

“This raises the question, ‘What is shelter?’”
— Judge Morrison C. England, Federal District Court

More than 300 people have stayed at the new site since April, either because the city was about to sweep their campsites or because they called the city shelter intake line themselves, said Amber Abney-Bass, executive director of the nonprofit Jesus Center which is contracted by the city to run the site. More than 140 of them left either for violating program rules or not returning to their bed for 72 hours, prompting the shelter to give the slot to somebody else, she said. Fourteen have moved on to more stable housing.

Abney-Bass said she’s glad the case caused the city to create more beds, but she’s wary that as congregate shelters fall out of favor, some will remain on the streets believing “nothing else is good enough” compared to a tiny home placement.

Her nonprofit has assessed more than 100 other people living on the streets since the settlement who have refused a shelter placement if they couldn’t get into the tiny homes site.

Waiting for more judicial guidance

In another case, in Sacramento, a federal judge has temporarily halted encampment sweeps during heat waves twice since last year, after advocates pointed out in court that the city had been directing unhoused people to a sanctioned campground on unshaded asphalt. The site, city attorney Susana Alcala Wood said, does have meals, showers, restrooms and social services.

The city has asked the 9th Circuit to weigh in.

“In order to advise my client as to what constitutes sufficient shelter, I need the court to tell me,” Alcala Wood said.

For the most part, Sacramento has not issued criminal citations against unhoused people violating new camping restrictions passed last year, including bans on camping near schools or for blocking sidewalks. Instead, assistant City Manager Mario Lara said city workers focus on “voluntary compliance,” which does include ordering people to move their tents.

That’s drawn the ire of residents and other local politicians who want camps cleared faster and more frequently. Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho has threatened city officials with legal action if they don’t more aggressively enforce the camping bans.

Whether California’s shelter options are “adequate” alternatives to encampments remains an open question. Will Knight, decriminalization director at the National Homelessness Law Center, who opposes the bans, said that’s the next legal frontier for cities hoping to enforce camping restrictions.

Knight defines adequate shelter as accommodating of the personal reasons someone might refuse a traditional shelter bed — including proximity to their children’s school, transportation options or wanting to stay with a pet or partner.

“It has to be done from an extremely humane and individualized level,” he said, of enforcing camping bans.

Meanwhile, the Idaho ruling undergirding the debate may go before the Supreme Court. The Oregon city of Grants Pass, after losing its bid to enforce its camping ban in a similar case before the 9th Circuit this year, has appealed to the high court.

Alcala Wood, of Sacramento, said she’s among a number of city attorneys who plan to sign on to a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in.

“Is a shelter not adequate if it doesn’t provide a place for your pets? Is a shelter not adequate if it doesn’t provide a place for you to store all your excess personal belongings?” she said, ticking off cities’ questions about their obligations. “Should we allow a person to be able to cook in a shelter? What about open flames? These are all questions we do not have the answers to.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

It’s rare for a California bill to come back to life after enduring a quiet legislative death, but a shelved effort to help more community college students transfer to the University of California suddenly has new legs.

Spearheading this last-minute revival is bill author Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, a Democrat from Sacramento, who told CalMatters in an interview that his office spent weeks crafting the legislation with representatives from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.

McCarty said the proposed law, Assembly Bill 1291, has input from the Senate and Assembly legislative leaders as well. It must pass the Legislature by Sept. 14.

“This is a game changer for higher education access and for expanding enrollment through the community college transfer process,” McCarty said in an interview. “While not perfect, this simplifies more than anything we’ve ever seen.”

He said the bill sets in motion a pathway to achieve a holy grail for higher-education advocates: A common admissions guarantee for community college students to get into a UC or California State University campus. Currently, community college students earning an associate degree for transfer, a specialized associate degree, are guaranteed admission to a Cal State campus — but not one of their choice. No such systemwide guarantee exists for the UC, though select campuses have their own transfer pathways, and the system is working on its own transfer guarantee.

It’s a striking and rapid turn of events for a measure that a Senate committee killed Sept. 1. The original version of this effort, Assembly Bill 1749, also by McCarty, was held by the Senate Appropriations Committee in the semi-annual bill culling called the suspense file. That bill would have created a UC-wide transfer guarantee through the associate degree for transfer and was backe by student groups and the Campaign for College Opportunity, a major player in California higher education advocacy and policy.

The UC system opposed it, arguing that some of its majors have higher academic standards than what’s required to earn the associate degree for transfer. The UC has no position on McCarty’s latest bill, a spokesperson said.

Scholars say California needs to overhaul its process for how students transfer. “Most students who wish to transfer never do, with large variation across racial and ethnic groups,” said a recent report by the Public Policy Institute of California.

McCarty’s bill would create a pilot at UCLA that identifies 12 majors — four in the sciences and math — by 2028 that would be similar to the courses community college students take to earn associate degrees for transfer and that are accepted by Cal States. The pilot would identify eight majors by 2026. The bill also would phase in at least four more UC campuses that would accept 12 majors that are similar to those associate degrees. There’s intent language to have all nine UC campuses that enroll undergraduates take part in the program by 2031-32.

“This is a game changer for higher education access and for expanding enrollment through the community college transfer process.”
— Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, Democrat from Sacramento

But while McCarty’s original bill included an admission guarantee, this version doesn’t, noted Jessie Ryan, a senior executive at the Campaign for College Opportunity. Instead, the current version says the UC would “prioritize admission” to transferring students.

“We see this new bill as being the baseline and not the ceiling for what we hope will happen with the UC’s commitment to strengthening the transfer pathway,” said Ryan, who added the organization isn’t taking a position on the new bill.

But two students representing University of California and California Community Colleges student governments oppose McCarty’s new bill — and were caught off guard by McCarty’s latest proposal.

“We were definitely not reached out to by the author nor the sponsors for this,” said David Ramirez, government relations director of the UC Student Association and fourth-year student at UCLA.

The new bill is a gut-and-amend, which takes legislation that’s gone through some of the legislative process and completely rewrites it to meet legislative deadlines.

“I’m initially very concerned with what this bill looks like,” Ramirez added. “We certainly won’t be supporting it.” His organization will take a formal position on the bill this evening, he said.

Ramirez wasn’t aware of the bill’s existence until a CalMatters reporter called him for comment yesterday morning.

“I’m initially very concerned with what this bill looks like. We certainly won’t be supporting it.”
— David Ramirez, governmental relations director of the UC Student Association and fourth-year student at UCLA

Chanelle Win, who leads legislative efforts for the Student Senate for California Community Colleges, also said she opposes the bill.

Chiefly, it undermines the goal of having one admissions guarantee for the UC and Cal States by taking a piecemeal approach. She also fears it preempts an existing student and advocacy effort to propose a transfer guarantee to the UC created by a previous state law. Ryan said she doesn’t think the bill upends that effort.

McCarty understands the students’ criticisms, but “like everything else in the legislative process, you have to compromise,” he said.

“I’m not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” he added.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Billy Joe Robinson Sr.
May 12, 1975 - September 5, 2023

Billy Joe Robinson Sr. — a father, a brother, an uncle and a great friend to many — sadly passed away on September 5, 2023, in his home.

Billy was born to his mother, Marian Bowie, and his father, William Robinson, on May 12, 1975 in General Hospital in Eureka.

Billy was a proud tribal member of Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria.

Through out Billy’s years he spent most of his time taking care and hanging out with his mom. No matter what he was doing he always made time to be home and be with his family. He most enjoyed the days watching the Redskins, working on cars, playing cribbage, darts, Yahtzee, horseshoes tournaments with his brothers and close cousins. He enjoyed riding motorcycles, and being outdoors with his kids, taking his daughters to go blackberry picking and flying his drone with his son.

Billy was a man of heart. He was a very caring, loving and smart man and could always make you laugh if you were feeling down. Billy wouldn’t hesitate to help anyone out who needed help. Billy loved everyone, especially his kids and mom.

Billy is going to be greatly missed by his family and friends.

Billy is preceded in death by his mom, Marian Bowie; his brother, Gary Robinson; his sister, Jamie Morales; his nephew, Zachary Purim; his uncle, Duane Bowie Sr.; his aunties, Janice McGinnis and Norma Jean Carter; and cousins Les Bowie Sr, Bobby Bowie, Danny Lopez, Joe McGinnis Sr, and Victor Billy.

Billy left behind his daughters, Grace and Treasure Robinson, Carole Hanley; and his son Billy Robinson Jr; his brother, Roy Robinson; and his sisters, Valerie Robinson and Charlene Scott; kids by heart Shawn Robinson, Brittany Hanley; mother to his kids, Krissey Hanley; his Auntie, Aileen Meyer; Nephews, Manny Gonzalez, Brandon Brumwell, Travis Purim, Gary Jr.; nieces, Shaya, Marissa and Sunshine Robinson, Tiffany Strohbin; and cousins Jim Bowie, Gusto Bowie, Jeremey Houston, Brian Wells, Debbie Layton, Ed Smith; and many many more.

Memorial Services will be held Friday, September 15, at Sanders Funeral Home in Eureka at 5 p.m. After that will be a celebration of life that will be held at his home on the Bear River Rancheria in Loleta on Carroll Road.

The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Billy Robinson’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

Mattole (Walter Charles Sharp III)
Nov. 14, 1934 - Aug. 21, 2023

Mattole, born Walter Charles Sharp III on November 14, 1934, in Germantown Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, passed in his sleep on Monday, August 21, 2023, his beloved wife, Jeanne by his side. His soul peacefully left his body in the timber-framed cabin built by two of their sons, on their land in Honeydew, overlooking the Mattole River.

Mattole met Jeanne McCord Mattole in 1969, at a party hosted by mutual friends, George Goehring and Dennis J. O’Brien (d. 2023). He won her over with his smile, kind demeanor and his story of having just returned from the Woodstock Music Festival, where he had been up close to his idols as he helped run the lights for the show.

He was preceded in death by his father, Lt. Colonel Walter Charles Sharp, Jr (d. 1976) and his mother, Catherine McGarvey Sharp (d. 2009), and he is survived by his two closest siblings, Georganne Sharp Hughes (Saint Petersburg, Fla.) and Kevin Sharp (Largo, Fla.), as well as a much younger half-sister he always wanted to meet, Lisa Sharp Cogbill (Little Rock, Ark.).

A private family graveside memorial was held on Sunday, Sept. 3, 2023, at the Petrolia Table Cemetery, Petrolia. He was laid to rest in a rustic and elegantly hand-built coffin made from old Redwood salvaged by a native Yurok friend of the family. Later, family members gathered at the Mattole Valley Sungrown Farm in Honeydew, where stories of his many chapters, his original larger-than-life personality, his complete lack of care for what anyone else thought, his outlandish ideas (many attempted and some accomplished), and his passion for original adventures were shared by his family.

Mattole’s childhood was spent between their home on Long Beach Island, New Jersey and wherever his father was stationed, including the first few years of high school in Caracas, Venezuela. After re-discovering tumors in his brain during his junior year of high school, Mattole returned to Long Beach Island, where he graduated from Barnegat High School in June 1953. Mattole was always smiling and talking, and his yearbook is full of comments from faculty members and fellow classmates, referring to him as “Sharpie” and commenting on his gregarious personality and welcoming manner.

He entered college at Baylor University the following fall and found himself coming truly alive in the theatre department. However, he withdrew and joined the Navy. His Navy stint was cut short when the tumors returned, and he was honorably discharged. Mattole spent the remainder of the 1950s pursuing his acting career and education. He studied at the Cornish School of Fine Arts in Seattle, Wash. and the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Penn. He finished his studies in NYC, at the Herbert Berghof Studio. During this period he acted in many off-Broadway and regional theatre productions.

He is survived by his three children from his first marriage, and their partners, Geoffrey Sharp (Altadena, Calif./Elizabeth), Catherine Sharp Shahan (Monkton, Vt./Matt) and Hope Sharp (Montpelier, Vt./Joe) and their mother who raised them, Margery Gould Sharp (Shelburne, Vt.), as well as his six grandchildren through his first marriage, Marshall, Haley, Tom, Audrey, Miles & Juliet and two great-grandchildren, Ezra & Aaron.

The 1960s were a busy and ambitious time for Mattole, Marge and his young family. Marge purchased a barge for them to build a traveling theatre on; he completed his BA in Theatre Arts from UCLA; became a member of Actors Equity; taught drama and speech at the Peddie School and regularly stage-managed theatre productions in New York City and New England, all with the amazing support of his wife.  In 1968 he left his family and spent the summer working with a group in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco called the Diggers and directing plays in Golden Gate Park. Many of the actors were runaway “flower children” who had never acted before. He was eventually divorced from his first wife, Margery.

Mattole is survived by his six children with Jeanne, and their partners, including Donovan Mattole (Center Valley, Penn./Emily), Dylan Mattole (Honeydew, Calif./Robbin), Rio Mattole (Whitefish, Mont./Stephanie), Morningstar Mattole Ohmes (Port Ludlow, Wash./Philipp), Meadowlark Mattole Clark (Brush Prairie, Wash./Sean), Dayspring Mattole (Arcata/Nate) and their son, Lee Mattole Kofi (McKinleyville/Celeste), who joined the family from Liberia as a young adult, as well as seventeen grandchildren, including Heather, Tristan, Maddox, Meadow, Sawyer, River, Cedar, Anika, Isabel, Sabine, Myah, Claira, Brayden, Ashton, Toby, Dominic and Heavenlee.

After meeting Jeanne, they lived in NYC before moving to Ibiza, Spain, eventually returning to San Francisco in the summer of 1971. After briefly living on a commune in Northern Mendocino County and running a teahouse (Trans Love Airways Teahouse) in Legget, in 1973, Mattole and Jeanne purchased acreage along the Mattole River in Humboldt County, California where they initially lived in a teepee. Mattole hand-built a cabin on the land and invited many family members and friends over the years to come live on the land with them, including nephew Marc Regan. Without electricity, everything was done by hand and completely off-the-grid, including building, farming cannabis, and caring for dozens of animals over the years, including horses, ponies, donkeys, goats, peacocks, chickens, a cow and a pet deer, along with loved dogs and cats. While growing his cannabis in the open under the sun and riding his horse around the valley in the nude, his only run in with the law was his constant free-ranging of animals across the valley!

The 1970s was a period of environmental activism and community building for Mattole, including periods of protest where he refused to ride in vehicles that produced carbon monoxide gases, polluting the atmosphere, and a period where he refused to speak as a silent protest. He and Jeanne hosted a number of equinox and solstice gatherings on their land. In 1979, Mattole generated publicity for his 300 mile/three-month trek through Northern California by horseback to speak to Governor Jerry Brown, representing many passionate local environmentalists in seeking Brown’s support in designating over 75,000 acres of coastal land in Southern Humboldt and Northern Mendocino counties, including The Kings Range, Gilham Butte and Chemise Mountain as National Wilderness Areas, as well as the expansion of the Sinkyone Wilderness Area, together one of the last primitive coastal lands in the contiguous United States. He also carried with him a list of other demands including freedom to legally grow cannabis and a protest against the proposal to open up the coastline of Humboldt to offshore oil drilling. He embraced community organizing and actively participated in a movement to create a public school in their community of Ettersburg, personally riding his horse to every home in the area and presenting the school district and county with a list of every child living in the hills and the signatures of their parents, which contributed to the county approving creation of public school, which originally met in the log cabin on his land before a building was erected.

The 1980s was a period of spiritual seeking and evangelism for Mattole, after his early 1970s “Jesus movement” experience, which resulted in the founding of a church on their land and traveling the world “preaching the message of Jesus” (including smuggling Bibles into China; annual trips street-preaching in NYC, etc.) much of it from the back of his horse, Honeydew, or behind a wagon covered in signs. Many residents of Southern Humboldt will remember this period of his life when he was dragging a cross and preaching on the streets in Garberville. Like all endeavors, when Mattole decided to do something he did it in a radical way!

In the 1990s his extreme activism and externally focused protests and outreaches slowed down as his children grew into adulthood. His last thirty years were spent closer to home, embracing the land he loved, growing organic blueberries, and passing on the legacy of growing cannabis under the natural sun in the same way he did back in 1973. Up until his passing he was still a font of offbeat ideas (e.g. let’s buy a “Chinese Junk” sailboat and circle the globe.) He still ventured out for periodic adventures (e.g. retracing the Applegate Trail by wagon; trips around the world), but he always returned to his home in The Mattole Valley overlooking the Mattole River, his namesake.

A true original, over the course of his almost 89 years he wore many hats (literally – he loved a good hat) and lived many lives, but his deepest love was for his family, including his wife Jeanne, his siblings, his 10 children, his twenty-three grandkids and his two great-grandchildren, all who he followed closely, asking whomever he was speaking to about everyone else and all who he would ask to visit constantly!

Mattole was a highly memorable character. The Humboldt region he so loved, and his many friends and family around the globe, have lost an original soul. He will be missed.

In lieu of flowers or plants as condolences, the family requests that donations be made to the Mattole Valley Resources Center, a Nonprofit Community Support Organization meeting critical needs in the Mattole Valley. Additional information can be found at www.mattolevalleyresourcescenter.org or checks can be mailed to MVRC, PO Box 191, Petrolia, CA 95558.

The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Mattole’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.